2 posts from April 2010

April 25, 2010

Great public service video from my friend and colleague, North Carolina Personal Injury Attorney David Daggett. Life's dreams can be shattered in a single moment. Don't drink and drive. Simply put: There are options. Take a cab; have a designated driver; don't drink.

"To boost its profits and underbid
competitors, Charles Evleth Construction routinely denied its hardworking
employees a fair wage and overtime pay," Brown said. "Today's judgment secures
back pay for more than 200 employees and prohibits this company from violating
workers' rights."

In addition to providing back wages for more than 200
construction workers, today's settlement prohibits Charles Evleth Construction
from:

- Denying fair wages and overtime pay for workers; - Paying
employees in cash to avoid state and federal taxes; and - Permitting
supervisors to take kickbacks from their employees' paychecks.

Today's
settlement follows a January 2009 suit Brown filed in Kern County Superior Court
against Charles Evleth Construction to recover unpaid wages for workers who were
denied full paychecks and overtime pay.

Brown's office initiated its
investigation in late 2008 and found nearly 1,200 violations of California law.
In addition to wage violations, the investigation found that the company had
failed to pay unemployment insurance, make state disability fund payments and
pay state and federal taxes.

These practices allowed the company to gain
an unfair advantage over its competitors and underbid them for construction
jobs.

In the complaint filed in January 2009, Evleth was sued for
violations of:

Juan Manuel Avalos of Bakersfield worked for
Charles Evleth Construction for five months in 2005. Avalos was hired with a
verbal agreement to work five days a week for $750 per week in pay. However,
when Avalos started, he was required to work six days a week and often worked
12-hour shifts without overtime pay. Avalos was paid in cash every week, but
discovered two months into the job that a site supervisor had been cashing his
paychecks and taking up to $500 every week from his pay, leaving Avalos what
remained in cash.

Last month, Brown filed two other lawsuits against
companies that failed to pay workers and subjected employees to potentially
dangerous workplace conditions, including: